wrote in message
...

I'm primarily used to untowered fields, so the clearance delivery and void
time et al can be kinda a pain. It was the "shortly after departure" that
I was
thinking about. Basically, planning to make the trip VFR, but filing an
IFR plan in
case the weather's worse than you expected. If you're 2 hours down the
road VFR
without having opened your IFR flight plan and you try to open it then and
get a
clearance, it's probably been flushed from the system and is as bad as a
pop-up.


Even if it's still in the system the controller working the airspace two
hours down the road from your filed departure point isn't going to have the
flight plan. And you shouldn't expect him to.